He shoved the book into my hands. ‘You keep it, it just annoys me.’ He tugged Ariadne’s halter free from the railing. ‘Barbarians in the citadel,’ he muttered and led the troop away, on the never-ending traverse of the ruined Prom; the Ozymandias of Cardigan Bay.
I cast my gaze back down at the pages of the book and found the text that had most upset him; words of almost inexpressible poignancy. Aberystwyth, it said, was superior to many fashionable continental watering holes in being entirely free of such meteorological nuisances as the mistral, the sirocco or dust storms. In fact, said Sir James Clark, the court physician, it was better than Switzerland.
The words stabbed the heart. Free from the effects of the sirocco, that hot dry desert wind that blows in off the Sahara and ruins your picnic. It was impossible to imagine a guidebook writer expressing such sentiments today; and there was only one reason the man fifty years ago could write them: it would never have occurred to him that his audience might laugh. And they for their part would never have dreamed of responding to his kindly homilies with such impertinence. And that was it, the essence of our malaise: our forefathers were entirely free of that despicable modern vice, facetiousness. I stood transfixed for a while, infected with Eeyore’s melancholy. He had reached the Pier now, or what was left of it after the storm forty years ago: a dilapidated shed bathed in thin grey drizzle, and Matterhorned with seagull droppings; but still undisturbed by those hot, dry Saharan winds.
Chapter 10
THE NEXT DAY was Sunday and we drove to Lampeter, about half an hour’s journey south-east of Aberystwyth. Calamity had spoken on the phone to Emily’s roommate at the college and she was willing to talk to us. Her name was Eleri. On the way, Calamity tried to recap the case but there wasn’t much to recap.
‘We’ve got an old man dressed as Father Christmas. He goes to see the new Clip movie and afterwards gets whacked. Maybe intentionally, maybe accidentally.’
‘My money’s on accidentally. Could have happened to anyone – he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Simple drive-by slaying.’
‘My money’s on that, too. The Clip movie was made from footage found by workmen rebuilding the Pier.’
‘There was a druid inscription warning them not to open the room, so naturally they did just that.’
‘The movie is about the Mission House Siege. Something bad happened there, so bad no one wants to talk about it, although they don’t show it in the movie.’
‘The army chaplain went mad.’
‘A taxidermist saw the movie and hanged himself from Trefechan Bridge.’
‘A guy called Elijah turns up claiming to be the brother of the dead Father Christmas.’
‘We think the dead guy hid a ticket from the Pier hat-check office in the alley before he died. The item deposited is a photo of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This angle is potentially very interesting.’
‘Or it’s a red herring.’
‘I’ve got a hunch it’s the key to the whole thing.’
‘I’ve got a hunch you’re only saying that because you’re star-struck about the Pinkertons.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Believe me, there’s nothing special about them. You may think so now, but one day when you run into one of them you’ll realise he’s exactly like anyone else: a tired, soul-weary, overworked guy in a crumpled suit, with a failed marriage and a suitcase in the attic in which he stores a load of dusty things that used to be the youthful ideals he started out with.’
Calamity looked at me askance. ‘Sounds like you know this guy.’
‘He’s every man who got past thirty without making something of his life. That’s most people in Aberystwyth, including me.’
She thought for a second and decided not to go down that route. ‘What about the Queen of Denmark?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Think she’s for real?’
‘No, but then the whole thing is so crazy maybe she is.’
‘That’s what I think. It’s hard to believe someone would invent a routine like that if they were trying to trick you, because only someone really stupid would fall for it.’
‘Which means she must be for real, because if she’s not it means I’m really stupid.’
‘Don’t be like that. It means I’m really stupid, too.’
‘That’s all right, then. The odds against two people being so stupid are too formidable. She must be genuine.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I’m a hundred per cent certain she’s genuine. All the same, if you get a moment, speak to Llunos about getting the calls traced.’
We reached Lampeter College and drove under a stone arch into an inner court yard. We parked and approached the first student we saw. They weren’t hard to spot. They were all wearing the distinctive uniform of Lampeter College of Theology: a henna, beige and grey striped scarf over a tan duffel coat printed with a repeating pattern of crosses and coffins. The girl said Eleri was teaching Sunday School. Colleges don’t normally teach children on Sunday morning, but this was no ordinary college. They took seriously the scholar’s vocation of shining a light in the darkness. The girl walked us across a quad towards a low single-storey wing of the college, through an arched door into an old-fashioned schoolroom: rows of wooden desks scarred with years of wear and tear. Fuzzy yellow lights hung from the ceiling. It smelled of paraffin and that subtle mixture of sweetness and fart that collects around cloistered children. The children all stood up when we entered.
Eleri greeted us warmly and shook our hands. ‘This is home economics,’ she said. ‘Just the basic stuff at this age: weaving fabric from cobwebs, making soap from grit, anthracite perfume, penny hoarding, a hundred uses for stale bread, fifty simple one-cauldron dishes, making shoes out of slate. You know the sort of thing.’
‘It all sounds very impressive,’ I said. ‘My late mother, God rest her soul, always insisted on a traditional education.’
‘I knew it the moment I saw you,’ said Eleri. ‘Come, let’s try them with their catechism. You’ll be impressed.’ She turned to the class. ‘Right now, girls, who can tell me how the Soldiers for Jesus were founded?’
Hands went up around the room and the teacher pointed. ‘Yes, Meurig.’
‘Ma’am, there were three sisters from Llandre and they were walking one day and they chanced upon a woman who later scholars have revealed to have been an apparition of the Virgin Mary.’
‘Very good. And then what happened? Menna?’
‘Ma’am, she was drinking holy water from a brown paper bag and her speech was slurred.’
‘That’s right. Now who can tell us what she said?’
‘She revealed a sacred truth to the children.’
‘And what was it?’
Some of the hands went down.
‘Yes, Rhiannon.’
‘Miss, she said human happiness was just a fleeting will-o’-the-wisp; the tap of the hand on the window of a traveller in the night.’
‘A traveller who is running from the gallows, miss,’ another child added.
‘That’s right, very good. And what else did she say? Yes, Meryl.’
The girl stood up and recited with the air of one who is very proud of the words but has never really reflected much on their meaning. ‘She said that things are very bad, much worse than anyone thought. God didn’t have the heart to tell us just how bad things are and this was because He was a typical man. “We arrive as penniless beggars and beg for milk; we waste our lives pursuing empty dreams, deluded by myths of love and romance; the only thing that sustains us is hope, dangling like a carrot, the biggest lie of all. For how can there be hope for a race who will end their lives in a gabbling madness of disease and senility? Bereavement and mourning, loss and decay and despair; childbirth and betrayal; drunkenness and abuse; infant mortality, disease striking out of a cloudless sky at anyone; no warning, no indication; too little money, too great a burden; this is our lot. Denied fulfilment all our lives; haunted by desires that can never be stilled; robbed in our final days of all shreds of dignity; and heading for death, which spares none. And beyond? Oh, don’t even ask! It gets worse but I don’t have the heart in me to tell you poor blighters.” And they said, “Oh, go on, tell us, tell us,” and they wouldn’t leave her alone, so she vouchsafed them a vision of a Heaven which is like Blaenau Ffestiniog without the little railway: a lot of slate, and low cloud and drizzle, and a lot of gorse. The angels play tambourines and wear fustian. There’s also a small gift shop.’